All economic indictors tracked by Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler and the University of Colorado at Boulder rose during the third quarter, according to a report released Wednesday .

In its first year of implementation, the quarterly business and economic indicators report stresses the importance of new and existing registrations for forecasting employment growth in Colorado.

New business and nonprofit registrations increased from last year’s third quarter by 5.8 percent. Between July and September, 19,300 new entities were filed — the highest number of new filings in a third quarter since 2007.

When developing the model, Brian Lewandowski said he and his team at CU’s Business Research Division considered a variety of metrics for predicting economic growth.

“The strongest correlation was between employment and new entity filings with about 90 percent correlation,” Lewandowski said.

Existing business renewals saw a slightly less impressive improvement, with 0.2 percent more renewals in Q3 2012 over Q3 2011.

Colorado’s retail sales, construction and income increased, as well as nonfarm employment, by 37,300 jobs — or 1.6 percent — in 2012 compared with 2011.

“I think all of that adds up to increased consumer confidence,” Lewandowski said. “One caveat is that it doesn’t take into account a fiscal-cliff scenario.”

Their model is operating under the assumption that Congress will come to an agreement, preventing the across-the-board budget cuts.

Wednesday’s report notes that Colorado’s improvements in both income and employment outpace the nation.

This is only the third quarterly release in the report’s history.

“So far, it has seemed to work pretty well,” Gessler said. “Going forward, it looks like modestly good news.”

Q2’s report caused a stir when it reported a 17.9 percent decrease in business registration renewals. Amid complaint from businesses that never received a renewal notification, the state reviewed its system and found an error in its new electronic reminder process.

“What we can say is that the problem is fixed,” Gessler said. “It was a combination of a learning curve among the business community and there was room for improvement among our e-mail systems.”

Gessler said his office has aggressively reached out to local businesses in an attempt to educate them on the new electronic reminders.

Kristen Leigh Painter was a former business reporter who focused on airlines and aerospace coverage. She joined The Post in September 2011 and departed for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in August 2014. She graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a master's in journalism after earning a bachelor's in history from the University of Wisconsin La Crosse.